Sky Connect

[Koala5]

Afternoon all, A mate of mine is moving to a village where there is no LLU presence in the exchange at all and no Virgin media available. Now we have established that “Sky Connect” is pants and not worth bothering with the big question is are all the other companies rebranded BT products ie Orange etc etc etc the same as Connect ?? In which case would he be better just sticking with BT ?? Is there any easy way of checking this out?

Thanks In adavnce
Kev.

[timc]

Try PlusNet. They're owned by BT but run a better shop than BT and should be much cheaper.

[Scubbie]

Each company is free to negotiate with BT Wholesale over how it wishes to handle the BTW products.

Sadly Sky's BB Connect is perhaps the worst of them all. Others are managed a lot better.

TimC has mentioned PlusNet. They certainly do appear to be the best option at present. They can supply a telephone line and BB connection for a good price.

[James_Mitchell]

I was a PLus net customer for almost 7 years before I switched to Sky LLU and they are just *OK* and nothing more now. They have gone off a lot in the last 12 months or so. BT are digging it's claws into Plus Net now is a major way.

Their 'exchange market' based pricing winds me up as well.

Market 1 (which your exchange sounds like i.e. having nothing other than BTW products available in your exchange) pay more now than market 2 exchanges (upto 3 providers including LLU) or market 3 (more than 3 available providers) for exactly the same ADSL service.

It's not the customers choice as to which exchange they are connected to so why should customers in rural areas pay more than customers in large cities who have more choice?

The main reason why I ditched Plus Net. Their tech support is also very patchy and the MAC issuing system is also very questionable as it took me 3 lengthy phone calls to get my MAC to move to Sky.

[Koala5]

Thanks for the replies, I have passed the information on.
Hopefully he will end up with a reasonable connection.